I use one big file as my journal in obsidian instead of a new daily note everyday. I do this primarily because sometimes I write about the same thing on different days (these things are not yet “mature” enough to be made into their own atomic notes) and having this related content spread across different files is hard to make sense of later on when I want to write in continuation to something that I had written about on some previous day(s).
So my current approach is to use date stamp whenever I write in this big journal note and when it makes sense to put the content in a note of its own I use the note composer plugin to select the required content and extract it into a separate note… Leaving an embed in the original big journal note. Therefore I can now see my train of thought over time in this big journal note as I scroll through it.
If I used a single daily note called Daily and I linked to a note A from this, the backlinks of A wouldn´t show me the date when I linked A, but only Daily, so that´s a huge drawback.
That is a problem. Currently, it is easy enough to click on the backlink to see the date, but that’s not idea. This could potentially be resolved if the backlinks could display the header path of the file where the link comes from. In other words, in addition to displaying a snippet of the file where the link is located, it would also display something like:
Linked mentions:
- Daily > 2022-02-22 Tue > Agenda
- [[Link to file]]
where “Daily” is the name of the file, “2022-02-22 Tue” is an H1 header, and “Agenda” an H2 header under the H1 header.
That way you could see the header path, which in the case of a single daily notes file would include the date so long as the date was included in the header path. I think this could also be useful in other use cases as well.
I’ve thought about this as well - I’m curious if you want a single note or just the ability to infinite scroll?
I ask because personally, an infinite scroll would be super useful (similar to Roam). Instead of clicking in and out of different daily notes (or linking them), Daily Notes (or any folder or set of notes with a tag, etc) could maybe have a UI plugin that stacks the notes in that group one above the next to facilitate this.
Curious what you think!
Yes, In my case the ability to infinitely scroll through all past daily notes is the only reason I use one big daily note file.
I’d be excited for a feature like that too! Some talk here about it: Note infinite scroll / opening folder of notes
@jamietr I really like your idea of simply showing the heading for the backlink. I made a request for sorting backlinks by headings because sometimes I use a workflow that utilizes the same headings in different notes which would make that type of sorting useful. Perhaps it would also be useful in the context of the discussion here. Here’s a link Option to sort backlinks by heading
Thanks.
Sorry for the long wait for a response. Here’s a link to the script in my github repo . The bash script is commented in brazillian portuguese but feel free to message me on any questions.
Thanks 
Here i write my solution for this topic: Is keeping daily notes separate a best practice? - #18 by Wolfgang_Godlinski
Jamie Rubin has gone back to using individual daily notes.
That last post was really neat, but his solution would be much easier to use in my opinion if you could search and edit directly within the transcluded note sections. I posted more about that in the related feature request here. Hopefully that functionality will become available eventually, but even if not, I think this is a decent way to get the best of both worlds.
Hello, interesting post. Thank you very much for your work here! Many good ideas. I think / I want the same function that the app logseq has. There you automatically have a journal with all notes in a chronological list. Each note can be a single note. Then you have both. I don’t like all my thoughts in one big and long note. But I like a journal with a scroll function and the possibility to search through everything. Loqseq also has the advantage that it lists all the notes in the journal and not just the Daily Notes. There is an Obsidian Plug In “Daily Notes Viewer”. This offers a partial solution. But only for Daily Notes. Searching the displayed notes is not possible either and you can set how many notes should be displayed in the viewer. So not all notes but e.g. the last 60 days.
You can include notes inside note with the same syntax than pictures :
![[Note1]]
And they will appear inside your note.
You can test the last plugin edited on the Community Plugin installator, named : Daily Notes viewer. It seems to integrate daily notes inside a big viewer note. Maybe it could help.
Yes, I think this would be a very useful feature. This would be even better if there is setting such that a mega-journal-note can be made with not just daily notes but, in addition every block of text with a [[date]] mentioned - all this extracted to be displayed chronologically in this mega-journal-note and all of this leaving links back to original location.
Think this should be a seperate feature request - if it hasn’t already been made
Not that it matters, I prefer atomic notes - Short and crisp.
I keep researching and adding them,splitting them (as and when I discover information) - which actually helps me keep track of things and if need be go up the branch and mend the stuff.
As opposed to maintaining one big file - which might offer cohesion but to a large degree impedes rearranging related points
I prefer a solution that lists all notes chronologically. No matter where in Obsidian I made them and no matter if I insert a [[date]] as a link or not. Each note automatically gets a creation date and a modification date. My wish would be to have a journal with chronological order based on the modification date.
Just wanted to say that I have been thinking through this problem recently and that this discussion from a few months ago has been very clarifying. Thank you to everyone that contributed.
I think that this recent plugin (GitHub - Quorafind/Obsidian-Daily-Notes-Editor: A plugin for you to edit a bunch of daily notes in one page(inline), which works similar to Roam Research's default daily note view.) is the current best answer for this question. It implements a view of the Logseq/Roam-style continuous flow of multiple daily notes
- I do not have the discipline and focus to fastidiously breakdown content into atomic snippets. Obsidian provides me with near real time access to everything in my vault.
- Searching and linking to headers, sections, and blocks are tools that did not exist for Luhmann. This is why the adherence to atomicity seems out of place with modern tools.
- I use a longish daily note - it satisfies my diary - journal - daily writing needs. They are longer now because the value of my vault is huge and I look forward to thinking and writing in it more with each passing day. Being able to read later and make notes with Readwise Reader has greatly improved this activity.
- Find myself peppering links throughout my daily notes (and other longish notes). Specifically placing them in the relevant headers, sections, and blocks. And sometimes I have multiple links with same name in the same document. That’s ok.
- Several folks in this thread have mentioned showing a path for the document hierarchy of a link. That would be a tremendous productivity enhancement; especially with the new Canvas plugin.
- I love this Obsidian Place!